Aussie DevCon: Bob Zaunere's Opening Session

by Russell Eggen

Published 2007-05-25    Printer-friendly version

Bob Zaunere's opening session at the 2007 Aussie DevCon in Sydney, Australia covered aspects of the Clarion 7 and Clarion.NET IDE, including the new dictionary editor and the visual data designer. Bob also offered a preview of the new AppGen, and showed a Clarion ASP.NET version of the School app as well as Clarion code running on a mobile device emulator.

The new IDE

Bob started with the working bits of the IDE, showing the various docking toolbars and how to collapse them and/or dock anywhere you want. Next he explained solution files, which are the C7/Clarion.NET equivalent to projects (although a solution can also be a group of projects). Bob demonstrated a solution and showed the various settings, including setup options.

What was seen for the first time was the application options, which the alpha team does not yet have. These look exactly the same as the dialogs in C6, so Bob did not spend much time there since there was nothing really new.

Next Bob went over the redirection file and some of the differences in the new IDE, mainly that it allows you to switch between multiple Clarion versions going back to Clarion 4.

He mentioned that there are two threads in the IDE, one for the GUI and one for the background tasks like parsing code. The background thread runs concurrently and handles the loading processes.

After opening a few source files, Bob demonstrated bookmarks and mentioned they are saved between sessions; if you collapse blocks of code in the editor (code folding), the collapse states are also saved between session.

Clarion.NET and WinForm

Bob then showed a quick demo of a WinForm application, which was the same School app shipped with the current version of Clarion; there will be more details about this in the coming days. He opened multiple browses and showed that you can dock these windows in the same manner as the toolboxes in the IDE, since the application code uses the same docking library as the IDE.

Next Bob showed the WinForm designer. This designer has the same properties toolbox as the C7 designer so you may access any window and control attributes. Clarion.NET has an additional event toolbox. Bob did not go into any details - that's for a later date. Bob then contrasted the WinForm designer with the C7 window designer.

He then demonstrated the source editor's search and replace dialog (which reminds me of TextPad's search and replace). A question came up about undo capability. Bob mentioned he could drastically change a window and then save it, come back and decide he did not like it and undo it to the way he found it. The search dialog also does regex (regular expression) searches.

One of the new designer features is snap lines. You can align various controls with each other based on the top, bottom, left or right sides, something I find considerably faster than C6's alignment functionality.

Bob made the point that the window designers for C7 and Clarion.NET are pretty much the same - if you learn one side, you pretty much have the other side learned. The same holds true for reports.

Clarion.NET web apps

Next Bob opened an ASP.NET solution. The window designer for ASP.NET applications is the same, as far as the developer tool set is concerned. In other words, each running application (C7, WinForms, ASP.NET) looked different, but the IDE tools were the same.

The ASP.NET version of the School app, running on IE7, looked like a web app but behaved like a desktop app. I think it is the best looking web app out of the box we've ever seen with Clarion tools.

Mobile apps

Bob then showed something I've never seen before: the device emulator. This looked like an on-screen image of a mobile phone, and the application running in that emulator was Clarion code running on a mobile device. Another reason for .NET code! This got a good round of applause.

Clarion.NET is a full fledged .NET language which means it can work with any other .NET language. They say "assembly", we say "DLL". But a C# guy can get your stuff, he can give you his stuff and both libraries will work. Just use each other's namespaces and that is all you need.

Dictionary editor

Next came the dictionary demo. The dictionary is not completely done, and by that Bob specifically meant the user interface. He opened two dictionaries just to show that you can open more than one, but you are not limited to only a couple. The dictionary editor looked similar to C6, yet better and cleaner. You can see keys and relations at the same time now, using the quick view. Double clicking opens the various editors to get to the details and you can dock these editors; as with the rest of the IDE, you can set up the various dictionary windows the way you like. Drag and drop was asked about (drag from one DCT to another) and Bob said it was not there, but it was good suggestion.

I asked if it was possible to have multiple dictionaries per solution and Bob replied that it was not going to happen soon, but there are plans to use virtual dictionaries down the line.

Data Diagrammer

Next up was Data Modeller's replacement, the Data Diagrammer (for Enterprise versions of C7 and Clarion.NET only). My first impression is that Data Diagrammer looks like Visio. It is a vast improvement over Data Modeller. You can do all your dictionary work in Data Diagrammer if you so choose. I am thinking I might, as it looks quite nice. Resizing, scrolling, defining relationships, all the expected features are there. Move a table, and the relationship lines move with table, smoothly! Colors, fonts, etc are customizable, and you can print to PDF or save to an image (BMP for example). You can create a note on the diagram and attach it to a table.

AppGen

Bob showed a preview of th new AppGen but refused to go deeper since there is more work to be done. But it's nice to see this and we are the first outside SoftVelocity's offices to get a look at it. There is at least some familiar look about the new AppGen - think of the procedure property dialog with MakeOver applied. The point was to show there is work going on there, but it's not quite ready for a full demo.

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Russ Eggen has been using Clarion since 1986. Until about 1996, he was using it for business applications, mostly accounting programs. Afterwards he joined Topspeed as a consultant, and later as an instructor. He was a founding member of SoftVelocity when that company formed from Topspeed in May 2000. He left SoftVelocity in January 2001 and now works for his own company, RadFusion Inc. He still teaches and lectures, and is currently working on a new book and setting up a local Clarion classroom. Russ enjoys flying, scuba, and applied philosophy, and with great effort you might coax him into political discussions.

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